I bought an Oculus Quest and I'm blown away by the current state of VR

[mouser]

So I bought an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset ($300 amazon).



I was just blown away by the experience.  Both the quality of the experience inside the VR world, and also how painless the whole process is.
It's a standalone device, no need for cables to a computer (essentially powered by a phone-grade android cpu).

I have not been keeping up with the progress in VR technology.  I'm still in shock how cool the experience is.  I think we are going to see mass adoption of this stuff in the coming years.  As someone who is not really a video gamer and is mostly a board gamer, I really do think this is all going to change with VR.  Very cool stuff.

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/



(I've decided to try some tinkering with coding for it using Unity).

[anandcoral]

Thanks mouser for the info.

The link shows ready made animation. Can you record a video of what you see using the vr ?

Say in around the garden/house and virtual things along with real ones, if possible. This will give us better idea of it.

Regards,

Anand

[Shades]

Isn't this the version that requires you to have a Facebook account?

[wraith808]

My only experience has been my Playstation VR, and I love it- however the motion cap on first person shooter type of games makes my head hurt after a while like the first Doom did back in the day. Of course, just like then, I fight my way through because it's just so fun. One game to look into is Star Wars Squadrons. I love the way they integrated the 3D with the controls. It's a pretty awesome experience.

[mouser]

You do need a facebook account (yuck), but you could just create one solely for this purpose.

anandcoral - It's not really doing AR (Augmented Reality), so it's not about showing you the real world with stuff added.

There are features for broadcasting what you see to a tablet for others to watch or record.

[anandcoral]

Oh I get all mixed up with VR and AR.

So it is like putting me on a new place which I can see in 360 deg. But the scenes are animated, right ?

[mouser]

yes.

[anandcoral]

yes.

Thanks.

[Deozaan]

That's pretty neat! I didn't realize the Oculus Quest 2 was a stand-alone device, and relatively cheap at $300! By comparison, the Valve Index is $1,000 and also requires a pretty beefy PC to connect it to.

I have quite a few years experience with Unity, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. But I have no experience with XR (a catch-all term for virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), etc.), so I can't guarantee I'll be much help in that regard.

That said, I can't help but suggest you take a look at Godot Engine, which I see as a rising star among game engines. About a week ago they published a devlog about Godot's current XR support and future plans: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-xr-progress-update-june-2021

Just something to keep in mind as you experiment.

[Shades]

But the Valve Index appears to be in a league of it's own. And from what I understand is that the Half-Life expansion Valve created for it is great.

Whether or not the Oculus can come close regarding hardware specs, it will have a hard time keeping up with the Valve Index.
If you can get yourself over the Facebook registration,I do think that the Oculus will make VR gaming much more accessible and way less cumbersome. That invites play more often, as setting up and/or linking yourself up with the Valve Index experience is not inviting, unless you have the better part of a day to immerse yourself into gaming. A quick gaming session is not the forte from the Valve Index. In that sense the Oculus might indeed be the better deal here.

A game play video from HalfLife Alyx:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTLotwKpLgk

[mouser]

The flexibility and ease of use of the Oculus is in a league of it's own -- I don't think people will realize how much of a burden it is to have to use a headset connected by a wire to your pc.
The nice thing about the Oculus, and future iterations, is that it has the OPTION to be connected to the pc to play some of these higher end games (through SteamVR), while still having the option to play games made for it portably.
So while Half-life Alyx cannot be played in the Oculus portably because it's requires too much computation, it CAN be played if you tether the headset to your pc.  So in that sense it's the best of both worlds.

[anandcoral]

So while Half-life Alyx cannot be played in the Oculus portably because it's requires too much computation, it CAN be played if you tether the headset to your pc.  So in that sense it's the best of both worlds.

[wraith808]

I don't think people will realize how much of a burden it is to have to use a headset connected by a wire to your pc.

It hasn't been a burden to me using it with the Playstation. Consoles are already the centerpiece of many an entertainment setup, so it's not that big a deal for most.

[Deozaan]

Thanks to mouser's gentle and not-so-gentle () encouragement via PM, I also have an Oculus Quest 2 now.

I'm still in the adjustment period, where sometimes I feel a little "off" after using it. It's like a very slight form of motion sickness, and it only happens after I take the headset off, rather than while I'm in the virtual space. But I agree that it's very impressive and quite entertaining.

And of course, I'm also planning to see if I can develop anything for it using Godot or Unity.

[wraith808]

Dammit... are you guys going to make me get one? The one thing with the PS4 one is that I'm really the only one that can set it up. Looking at this, it seems a lot simpler.

How did you guys get around the Facebook requirement? Or did you just decide not to care?

[Deozaan]

The one thing with the PS4 one is that I'm really the only one that can set it up. Looking at this, it seems a lot simpler.

I don't know what it takes to set up the PS4 one, but this is pretty easy. You basically just strap it on your face and then trace the open space on your floor to set up your "Guardian boundary" and you can move about freely in VR. Or if you want to be sitting or otherwise stationary, you can do that, too.

How did you guys get around the Facebook requirement? Or did you just decide not to care?

I created a new Facebook account and used that.

If you decide to get one, let mouser or I know before you set it up. We can get you a referral code that will give you and whoever refers you $30 to spend on the Oculus store when you activate your headset.

[wraith808]

I don't know what it takes to set up the PS4 one, but this is pretty easy. You basically just strap it on your face and then trace the open space on your floor to set up your "Guardian boundary" and you can move about freely in VR. Or if you want to be sitting or otherwise stationary, you can do that, too.

Not much, really. It's just that the PS4 is under my account and they don't really play the PS4 other than VR (it's miiine!) so they get me whenever they want to play.

[Deozaan]

I guess I should also clarify that it will (usually) remember your Guardian from session to session. So if you've already set it up once, then all you have to do thereafter is strap the device to your face.

I'm not sure if mine keeps forgetting just because it intentionally doesn't always remember it (such as after a reboot), or if it "forgets" when it detects I've moved too far away from my Guardian, since I keep moving it back and forth from my (home) office to my living room.

One thing that amazed me was how accurately it can track its own position. When I initially set it up and played with it for a while, I was in my living room. I don't remember how charged it was when it arrived, but after I pulled it out of the box I played for about 2 hours before it started warning me that the battery was going to die soon. So I turned it off and took it to my office to charge up. Later, after it was charged, I put it on my head at my computer desk and it told me I needed to return to my Guardian zone. So I got up from my desk and began to walk around it so I could exit the office and go to the living room. As part of the process of walking around my desk, I happened to face where my living room was (on the other side of a wall), and the Quest 2 showed an outline on the floor through the wall of where my Guardian zone was location. How did it know where it was in relation to the living room? I turned it off while in the living room, moved it to the office and charged it before turning it back on in the office. It felt like having x-ray vision! Or like in sci-fi movies where robots/cyborgs have blueprint schematics and other similar things overlaid on top of their "regular" vision. I don't think the Quest 2 was intended to be used for AR, but that's basically what this was.

It's really cool (and kind of scary!) to think of what could be possible in a couple/few decades as the technology improves and continues to miniaturize.

Later I also discovered that you can mark the size and position of a real-world couch and desk and it will show them in VR to make it easier to sit down or place your controllers down with the headset on. So I did that. And now when I'm playing in the living room, I can see where my desk in my office is through the walls. And when I'm at my desk, I can turn my head toward the living room and see the Guardian boundary as well as my couch through the walls.

[mouser]

Dammit... are you guys going to make me get one? The one thing with the PS4 one is that I'm really the only one that can set it up. Looking at this, it seems a lot simpler.

One of the things that convinced me to pull the trigger on the occulus is how its described as reaching new levels of usability.  "It just works" is how it was described to me, and I have found that to be true.  And the fact that it's entirely portable and needs no beacons set up and doesnt need a cable attached to a pc, just makes it very easy to use.

[wraith808]

I'm glad the PS4 doesn't need beacons. It just uses the external camera as the focusing point for your playable area. As the PS4 is in my living room, the cord has never been much of an issue, unless I just lose track of what I'm doing in the game (usually because of minor vertigo) and get tangled. But I'm warming up to this.

[mouser]

here are some downsides to it:

1. Battery for the headset does not last very long, can be annoying; 3rd party battery pack is one solution.
2. Included head strap not very good; 3rd party replacement is solution
3. Games are SHORT and EXPENSIVE.

[wraith808]

That last point is the one that's keeping it in my cart on Amazon. I haven't found anything that really catches my eye. I finally purchased a PSVR because of a few games coming out in rapid succession that I couldn't resist- Iron Man VR, Some really good DLC on Beat Saber, Squadrons, and a couple of others. I've browsed the store for the Quest, and nothing really catches my eye in that way so far.

[mouser]

yeah i mean if you already have psvr im not sure it makes sense to buy an oculus -- the games and experiences are going to be much smaller and lower powered
and ironically, MORE expensive than their full version brothers on pc and ps4.

[wraith808]

yeah i mean if you already have psvr im not sure it makes sense to buy an oculus -- the games and experiences are going to be much smaller and lower powered
and ironically, MORE expensive than their full version brothers on pc and ps4.

You're probably right, but the more I think about it, the all-in-one is very exciting! I'll keep an eye to see how the landscape of the games available develops.

[mouser]

I've been having a blast coding with Unity/C# for the device over the past couple of weeks.  Hopefully will have a playable game eventually.